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Matthew Knight Arena Sports

A father-son bond: love for their Ducks

Honoring their late son’s memory was paramount for Phil and Penny Knight

By Ron Bellamy

The Register-Guard

Appeared in print: Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2011, page E11

Matthew H. Knight was 34 when he died in a scuba-diving accident in El Salvador in May 2004.

He’d made the trip to shoot video as a fund-raising effort for local orphanages.

He was survived by his wife, Angie, and their two sons, Logan and Dylan; by his eldest son, Jordan, from a previous relationship; by a brother and a sister, and by his parents, Phil and Penny Knight.

His life was measured not by how much he accomplished in the business world but by how much he was loved by those close to him.

“He was 34 going on 24,” Phil Knight said. “He was still finding out who he was and what he was going to be, and he’d found a niche in charitable work, and hopefully that was going to be what he was going to chase.

“But he had three loving sons and a mother and father who miss him terribly, and a widow who misses him a lot, too.”

In 2007, Phil and Penny Knight pledged $100 million to the University of Oregon to create a Legacy Fund that would provide the financial safety net for a new basketball arena, and a year later, it was announced that the building would be named Matthew Knight Arena.

The donation was made with Matthew Knight in mind, his father said. “That was a big part of it, sure,” Phil Knight said.

Father and son were ever unified by their love of Oregon sports.

“He was contrarian by nature, and especially as far as his old man was concerned,” the Nike co-founder said. “I would root for Georgetown, so he would root for St. John’s. I would root for Duke, so he would root for North Carolina.

“But he loved the Ducks. We didn’t part there. So we thought this was about the best tribute we could think of, and that’s what we’ve done.”

So important were Oregon athletics to Matthew Knight, and as a shared family experience for the Knight family, that the fall after his death, during pregame warm-ups before the Duck football team’s season opener, Phil and Penny Knight and a few close friends shared a private moment in a very public setting, scattering some of Matthew’s ashes at midfield at Autzen Stadium.

As recounted the obituary, written for the family by Nike’s Scott Reames, Matthew Knight was a family man, who loved playing with his sons, taking them to the zoo or the museum or wrestling with them in the grass. He was a student of film-making who wanted to use his skills in videography to help make the world a better place. He was fascinated by nature, from childhood.

“Conversations with Matt were about possibilities, future plans, challenges,” Reames wrote. “Never about sitting still or the status quo. Matt was a young man in perpetual motion.

“If you were to poll those who knew him, one theme would emerge: Matt had a generous heart. He cared about those in need, he cared about animals, children and the things in life that he viewed unfair. He was on a personal mission to make the world a little better.”

Matthew Knight’s favorite song was “Desperado,” by the Eagles, which includes this line: “It may be raining, but there’s a rainbow above you.”

In the logo for the new arena, Nike designer Todd Van Horne sought to capture both Matthew Knight’s grin and a torii, a traditional Japanese gate, reflecting Phil Knight’s many trips to Japan to establish his company during Matthew’s childhood.

Phil Knight said he thinks of Matthew a lot, and “at odd times.

“It’s not the natural order of things, that you get pre-deceased by a child,” he said. “It’s a fraternity nobody wants to join, and those who are in it share a lot of common emotions. It’s a little hard to explain to those who aren’t in it.

“The memories come up at really odd times, and a whole different range of emotions, but they never go away.”

Knight said he is very proud of the building that bears his son’s name, and the pride that workers took in it. “One of the workers said, ‘I may work on bigger buildings in my life, but none that will mean more,’” Knight said. “It became an emotional monument as well as a building. That’s the way we see it, and we’re real proud of what they’ve done.”

In a visit to the site during the summer, Knight walked all the way to the top row of the end zone seats in the upper concourse, and saw for himself that there’s not a bad seat in the house.

“As a sports fan, the thing I like best about it is that it’s just a great, great place to watch a basketball game,” he said. “They’ve replicated the feel of Mac Court, which is great. ... It’s a great place to watch a game, and I think it will be a very intimidating place for visiting teams to come, and we wanted that.”

For Knight, the opening of the arena on Jan. 13 will be emotional, for he had long championed a new arena for Oregon, and now it bears his late son’s name.

“I hope it lasts for 80 years,” he said. “And that there are hundreds of thousands or millions of people coming out of that arena with smiles on their face.